Author note: TheGreatSalmon here again! With more angst…I might try update with something a little more light-hearted soon. And something longer than a drabble/oneshot. Please criticise! :)
A Matter of Days
Days. That's how long it had been since Meteor fell. Just a matter of days.
In less that a week, the world's most prosperous city had been reduced to rubble. Sturdy concrete buckled and cracked, steel scaffolding bent and collapsed. Pure, raw mako singed the unwary as it pooled on the pavement.
Barret didn't know what was worse – the sheer carnage, or the fact that some people had survived. If you can call it that, he thought to himself, with a grimace. He considered those left alive the unlucky ones. There were a few people roaming the slums nursing a sore ankle or a bruised knee, but it would be a miracle for anyone residing on the city's upper plates to escape the destruction with anything short of a severe concussion. Even those who seemed
the most blessed could be the hardest hit – with the loss of multiple friends and family members. The populace would have to face the facts eventually. They no longer had a home.
Tens of thousands were dead. And, more immediately, there was a severe lack of food, water, and other essentials. The closest town that might have those things available was Kalm, but no-one seemed to be able to look there for help in good conscience. After all, the settlement that had previously been little more than a stout town had swelled to the size of a city with the constant trickle of refugees. His own daughter among them, Barret was hardly about to start depriving the city of anything that helped to fulfil its needs.
They'd had no choice but to outsource to farms on the coast, further out even than Fort Condor. 'They' being Avalanche, terrorist organization-turned peacekeeping heroes. 'They', the ones who had skyrocketed from slum-dwelling dirt to the stuff of legends seemingly overnight.
No matter how long he might be in that position, Barret didn't think he'd ever get used to being thought of as a leader of anything more than a miniscule group of small-time environmental activists. Boldness he had in abundance, but he could also be rash; he could be tactical, but had never been the cleverest of men – and as 'the gang' dispersed, so did his support in decision-making. A most critical loss had been Cloud, driven out to the farms on a beat-up bike 3 days past for goods.
Barret wished that he could just push everything off onto someone else, like the young soldier was prone to do, but then where would all the work end up? Nothing would ever get done, and an entire city, or what remained of it, would starve. If someone had to play mayor, it might as well be him…
Barret smelt the man before he managed to interrupt his brief reverie. No-one had had much time to wash or even sleep recently, but even so, Cid Highwind reeked – of the sharp tang of explosives and the sickly-sweetness of engine oil, on top of his usual aura of sweat and cigarette smoke.
"I'm leavin', buddy."
Barret grunted.
"You too, 'uh? What'm I sposed ta do now?"
Cid clapped him on the shoulder. "Stay alive, maybe? Figure out whatcha need, everythin' else'll sort out awright."
"What 'bout what I want?"
The pilot chuckled. "Life's rarely 'bout what you want, but hell, you better figure out real quick whether you want this whole town dependin' on ya."
"That's it, is it?" Barret stared solemnly out into the desolation. Then he seemed to find one last reserve of strength and clutched his gun arm as if for good luck, as he often did, and boomed, "Well, we'll see each other soon, got it? We're all gonna be together again before long. Make sure t' bring Shera, ya hear?"
Cid grinned, and nodded.
"Yeh. It'll be like old times. And all this'll just seem like some bad dream that happened years ago."